Board Apprentice Information

Board Apprentice is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to increasing diversity on boards by widening the pool of board-ready candidates. Diversity goes beyond gender and encompasses ethnicity, culture, age, disability, personality and skill set. Board diversity: The Board-driven solution Diversity is a hot topic and it’s no longer confined to gender; ethnicity is also now emerging. With Governments pressing their socio-economic agendas, empirical research showing improved returns from diversified boards and growing pressure to identify the business leaders of tomorrow, there’s real pressure building on Board Directors. With talk of quotas and legislation to force the pace and threats from investors to start voting against insufficiently diversified boards, we need to rise to the challenge. But where are all these diversifying candidates, who will help Boards to achieve diversity goals, to be found? Board Apprentice offers Boards a real opportunity to show true leadership and demonstrate that laws and negative pressure are not always necessary to move things forward. Set up as a not-for-profit organization, Board Apprentice, with the help of Boards, has the vision and a solution to increase diversity on Boards by widening the pool of board-ready candidates. By providing hands-on board experience to suitable individuals, Boards can help prepare countries and its organisations for the future in one small step. If for example listed companies all invited one Board Apprentice onto their boards for one year this would have a big impact on the range of candidates with listed company board experience. If, on top of that, Boards of unlisted companies, public bodies and not for profit organizations also invited a Board Apprentice onto their boards, then a diverse talent pool would be created and the existing pool of NEDs would be dramatically enlarged and enriched in a short space of time.